Late last night the Twitterverse was alive with the sound of clucking from foreign policy wonks outraged by Rajiv Chandrasekaran's fascinating, detail-rich Washington Post story on the very cozy relationship that think-tankers Fred and Kim Kagan had with multiple commanders in Afghanistan.  The highlights:

The four-star general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior U.S. military and civilian officials who served in the headquarters at the time.

The Kagans used those privileges to advocate substantive changes in the U.S. war plan, including a harder-edged approach than some U.S. officers advocated in combating the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction in eastern Afghanistan, the officials said.

The pro-bono relationship, which is now being scrutinized by military lawyers, yielded valuable benefits for the general and the couple. The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most-famous living general, provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute to Kim Kagan’s think tank. For Petraeus, embracing two respected national security analysts in GOP circles helped to shore up support for the war among Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.

Fred Kagan, speaking in an interview with his wife, acknowledged the arrangement was “strange and uncomfortable” at times. “We were going around speaking our minds, trying to force people to think about things in different ways and not being accountable to the heads” of various departments in the headquarters, he said.

The extent of the couple’s involvement in Petraeus’s headquarters was not known to senior White House and Pentagon officials involved in war policy, two of those officials said....

As war-zone volunteers, the Kagans were not bound by stringent rules that apply to military personnel and private contractors. They could raise concerns directly with Petraeus, instead of going through subordinate officers, and were free to speak their minds without repercussion.

Some military officers and civilian U.S. government employees in Kabul praised the couple’s contributions — one general noted that “they did the work of 20 intelligence analysts.” Others expressed deep unease about their activities in the headquarters, particularly because of their affiliations and advocacy in Washington.

Now, the standard reaction has been to blast the Kagans and Petraeus for being exemplars of the you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours collusion between top military brass and think-tankers.  It evokes the DC clubbiness that induces nausea in some quarters. 

I can't quite get there, however.  I can almost get there.  The three most damning elements of the story are: 

1)  The Kagans emailing Stanley McChrystal (and ccing Petraeus) because their requests to visit Afghanistan were getting slow-rolled.  In the email, they said that they were concluding that the strategy was not going well.  Soon afterwards, they got access and then wrote a WSJ op-ed praising the strategy;

2)  When Petraeus was the Afghanistan commander, the Kagans would occasionally "spar" with field commanders because they believed these officers weren't focusing on the Haqqani network more.  This made the officers decidedly uncomfortable, since the Kagans obviously weren't in the chain  of command. 

3)  Kim Kagan wrote fundraising letters for her think tank while in Afghanistan so the Kagans could stay in-country and volunteer for CENTCOM rather than take any money from them. 

I think these are somewhat valid concerns, and yet....

a)  One of Chandrasekaran's implications is that a critical op-ed by the Kagans would have undercut GOP support for the Afhanistan strategy.  This strikes me as way, way, way, way exaggerating the influence of the Kagans.  There was no groundswell in the GOP to get out of Afghanistan, so a critical op-ed would have simply led to demands for greater resources in that theater of operations. 

b)  The Kagans' place in Petraeus' HQ clearly upset some military subordinates -- and yet I can't get too upset that they were made uncomfortable.  As the story notes, one of the reasons Petraeus wanted the Kagans there was to have an outside perspective on the operation.  No one inside the uniformed services is gonna like that, because it dilutes their own authority.  Indeed, the other way to spin this is that Petraeus was wary of getting too wrapped up in the military bubble and craved outside input.  Isn't that what you want as a check against organizational groupthink? 

c)  I'm not gonna defend the fundraising letter -- that seems... unseemly.  Castigating the Kagans for not being on Petraeus' payroll, however, also seems a bit strange.  This might have been a pay-for-play move for influence, but I don't think it was about money. 

From Petraeus' side, having the Kagans there clearly served a dual purpose.  Sure, he got an outside voice, but he was also able to co-opt potential critics with this gambit.  Whether this is a good thing or not for American foreign policy is an honest matter of debate.  It seems like Petraeus only coddled more hawkish military advisors, and it's likely the case that they would have been the bigger media thorn. 

As a general rule, however, I can't get too worked up about government officials seeking outside input.  This becomes a problem only if the outreach/co-optation is so successful that it shields a policy from any criticism -- and not even Petraeus is that good at stroking think-tankers. 

I understand the concerns that some Petraeus critics have with his relationship with the Kagans.  I share some of them.  But I would be equally wary of policy principals that refused to engage with outsiders or refused to consider information from outside their own bureaucracies. 

What do you think? 

Look, let's be blunt -- as a responsible foreign policy blogger, I should be trying to divert your attention away from the tawdriness that is the David Petraeus scandal.  There's no shortage of other interesting stuff happening in the world.  Things like Argentina's slow-moving debt debacle, or the discord between the EU and IMF over Greece, or even the possibility of the United States overtaking Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer. 

The thing is, I can't, I just can't.  I'm weak, and the way this scandal has metastasized is friggin' incredible.  The best summary of where things stand right now comes from Ace of Spades' Gabriel Malor: 

Jill Kelley, the woman who was (allegedly) threatened by Gen. Petraeus's squeeze Paula Broadwell and who (apparently) started the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus' ouster, who went to the FBI for help after the threats and then (allegedly) had a relationship with the FBI agent in charge of her own case, who (allegedly) sent her shirtless pics of himself, also (apparently, allegedly) had "compromising" communications with Gen. John Allen, the Big Damn Commander of our war effort in Afghanistan.

Yeah, that's about where we are now, and I'm afraid of checking my Twitter feed because there might have been new developments. 

Look, America's foreign policy community is gonna be transfixed on this for a spell.  Because it's got that car-crash quality that means it is just impossible to look away.  This is the kind of scandal that causes the Daily Beast's writing style to go so over the top that it actually published the following sentence:  "Broadwell may be able to run a six-minute mile with Petraeus, but Kelley looks like a woman who lets the guys do all the running—and in her direction."  I'm surprised they didn't embed a whip sound at the end of that sentence. 

And that's the interesting thing if one steps back for a second.  To repeat a theme, the American people by and large don't care much about foreign policy and national security.  But, based on my deep immersion into supermarket checkout literature, they do appear to be very interested in tawdry sex scandals and reality television.  Well, this scandal has copious amounts of this -- plus, you know, power. 

So unlike, say, questions about drone warfare or counterterrorism policy or homeland security or civil liberties, Americans will pay attention to this stuff.  Which is interesting, because over the past decade the military has been the one institution to inspire significant amounts of trust in Americans.  The less that the public trusts the military, the less that they will trust what the military is doing.  And as Thom Shanker notes in the New York Times, this scandal might affect that trust: 

[A] worrisomely large number of senior officers have been investigated and even fired for poor judgment, malfeasance and sexual improprieties or sexual violence — and that is just in the last year....

Long list of scandas involving top brass]

The episodes have prompted concern that something may be broken, or at least fractured, across the military’s culture of leadership. Some wonder whether its top officers have forgotten the lessons of Bathsheba: The crown of command should not be worn with arrogance, and while rank has its privileges, remember that infallibility and entitlement are not among them.

And this doesn't even get into other scandals at  various homeland security agencies *cough* Secret Servivce *cough*.

The military and intelligence communities have been doing a lot of things over the past decade that fall outside the bounds of traditional American foreign policy practices.  I'm not saying all of these things are bad -- it's a new century, new kinds of threats, and so forth.  But most Americans have passively gifted these agencies a lot of goodwill for them to do what they want.  I wonder whether a silly sex scandal will change all that.  

Developing...

Hmmm.... which magazine should I peruse online this AM.... maybe TNR?  The National Interest?  Nah, I'm not in the mood for deep thinking.  I'll just look at Rolling Stone, that won't take much intellectual heavy lifting.... oh, look, a profile of General McChrystal.... hmmm.... um.... holy cats.

Since everyone and their mother has their take on this Mongolian clusterf**k imbroglio already, I'm not going to bother linking to the rest of the blogosphere.  Instead, just a few measured and a few off the cuff reactions: 

1.  Doris Kearns Goodwin makes the case in today's New York Times that Obama doesn't have to fire McChrystal, pointing out that Union General George McClellan was far ruder to Lincoln, and yet was not fired.  This is historically true, but I'm not sure it's really the best example.  To put it gently, McClellan was a lousy, timid general -- by letting him stay on, Lincoln accomplished little but to prolong the war. 

2.  I find myself in agreement with Tom Donnelly and William Kristol: 

McChrystal should not be the only one to go.  Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and “AfPak” czar Richard Holbrooke should likewise either submit their resignations or be fired by President Obama.  Vice President Biden and his surrogates should be told to sit down and be quiet, to stop fighting policy battles in the press.  The administration's "team of rivals" approach is producing only rivalry.

They're right (see also David Ignatius).  McChrystal did himself no favors in the RS article, but he's hardly the only Afghan policy heavyweight to be tarnished by the essay.  Eikenberry poisoned the well with his press leaks last year, and Holbrooke is, well, Holbrooke.  A clean sweep might be the best move Obama could make. 

3)  Speaking of neoconservatives, it's worth noting that, contra Josh Rogin's take, GOP policy wonks are reacting the way you would expect a loyal opposition to react.  That is to say, sure, they're making hay of the problems with the Afghan strategy, but they're also quite firm in saying that Obama should dire McChrystal.  See Kristol,  Eliot Cohen, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham. 

This should not be terribly surprising.  Neoconservatives have been pretty clear all along about civilian control of the military, and McChrystal's gaffes cut right to the heart of this issue. 

4)  One final point:  beyond the descriptions of McChrystal and his aides acting like jackasses in Paris, the RS article was of little use.  It presented a slanted portrait of COIN and it's advocates, and seemed determined to paint McChrystal in the worst light possible.  As Blake Hounshell observed, it failed to note that at this stage it's impossible to evaluate the COIN strategy, because these approaches tend to have "darkest before the dawn" qualities. 

What do you think?